How to share your Kindle books with your friends

Q: How do I share a Kindle book once I am done reading it? – Angela from North Fort Myers, Florida

A: There are so many reasons to love a Kindle. It’s light, portable and you can store a zillion books on it. Not too mention it saves untold number of trees every year by skipping the whole printing on paper process. The Kindle pretty much rivals traditional printed books in every way.

Well, almost every way.

With a traditional book you can easily pass it along to your friends when you’re done reading it. And they can pass it along to their friends and so on and so on. But I’m guessing most of you Kindle owners out there wouldn’t be too keen on the idea of passing your Kindle along to your friends.

Luckily, Amazon provides a means for lending (some of your) Kindle books without having to hand over your Kindle to your friends. It’s not available for every Kindle book and the loan period is only 14 days but the process works when it can.

Patric Welch founded Noobie, Inc. in 2006 to help others effectively choose and use technologies to enhance their work and lives. The catchy company name earned Welch the name of Mr. Noobie®, but, in reality, Welch is an experienced and professional techie. Unlike most techies, Welch evaluates emerging technologies from a noobie’s perspective and provides technology education for all skill levels in a friendly, non-threatening way.

8 Comments

i highly recommend this i do it all the time, it;s a great way tho share books and you don’t have to spend a fortune buying them

simone
on March 22, 2011 at 9:51 am

Do a google search for skindle and you can share as many for as long as you like

Riva
on March 22, 2011 at 10:20 am

One thing to keep in mind, you can lend a Kindle book (or a Nook book, for that matter) only one time and only to one person. Once you’ve loaned it out, you can never loan that book again.

lynn
on March 22, 2011 at 10:22 am

Or … Have all your friends, family members, or book club members “Register” their Kindles to one account at Amazon. Then you all own the same books. Up to 6 people can be reading a book at the same time … it says so in Amazon’s Q&A;. Manage all your FREE books on someone’s computer in Calibre, and periodically make CDs for all members.

wing
on April 24, 2012 at 3:27 am

But, not all the books are loanable… I purchased some books, but none of them can be loaned. At least I don’t see this option on the product page.

Teresa
on October 14, 2012 at 1:43 pm

Noobie or Lynn:1.how do you go about having multiple people register their devices on one account?2. How does that work with credit cards?3. Are all books purchased or stored in the cloud visible to everyone on the account?

4. Also can a Kindle book owner lend a book to an android tablet owner (kindle app installed)?

Thanks!

Lynn Parkis
on October 15, 2012 at 11:20 pm

Teresa: 1. Go about registering multiple people to your Amazon account the same way you register your MAC, PC and Kindle to the account. They just need your Amazon account info: User name, e-mail address, password. 2. You can each register your own credit card. Just be sure to check which one is “up” when you order. My sis & I owe each other a few dollars now & then if we forget to check.3. All books purchased (plus freebies from ereaderiq.com) are held in the one account, ready for “up to six” people to read at once, per Amazon’s rules. Great for a Book Club.4. I have no idea about loaning books to an android … but if there’s a Kindle app. for it, I’d think you could. The app seems to take care of formatting the book for each machine.